Whats new in the garden

The peppers are happily growing nicely.

Baby Marigolds, saved from the nicer varieties at the gardens.

The baby tomatoes are growing nicely.

A peek in the greenhouse.

This is a lovely Chinese artichoke, or chorogi, or knotroot,artichoke betony, or crosne . I got a few from Chris and we had a nice evening trading plants and green seeds. I am very excited to grow these and cook them!

They look like spiral shells to me.

By my finger is a red occa tuber. I planted them in my big black pots. A recent trade was very informative and I got some seed variety and new interesting plants. I also received some white occa which also went into a very large tree pot.

Look, I might even get a head off this raddichio, it happened just after the frosts.

New greens hardening off for the ground.

Big Sunday Breakfast

Today's big breakfast for hubby ~

Egg scramble with liver and onions, garden dino kale and leek steamed in chicken broth added to the mix. Fava beans, with onion, pakrika and dino kale, 100% rye toast and coffee.

Another wonderful Sunday with no rain.














Big Sunday Breakfast ~ My hubby loved the look of breakfast this morning and took this photo with his phone.

Scrambled eggs, with cilantro, fava beans, brown rice with turkey and mushroom sauce, asparagus,
100% rye toast, Fugi Apple slices and coffee.

I made breakfast with extras because I am going in the garden on this fine sunny spring morning...

Another hobby

A bed set I made for my sister. She helped put it together.






































One of my first quilts I made for a friend






















































For my nephew



















































For my nephew Kalani ~ a Hawaii theme

































Guest room


























My nephews set























For a niece

Spring is here in Beaverton

My neighbor gave me a scrap piece of wood for this years Mason Bee apartment complex. I hope they like this house.

Great advice from a Master Mason Bee Keeper. I had said that many of my bees drown last year in my water buckets and the suggestion was made to put a stick my water buckets. I leave water out to remove clorine for watering my seedlings and for my compost teas. So far so good. No bees floating in the water.





















The Mason Bees are starting to emerge from the tubes.





Yay!

March 1st the lettuce and cabbage are sprouted and ready for the ground when I am.

I planted some beets yesterday.













Peppers 1st night outside and the peppers appear to be doing ok. I set them outside whenever it was sunny even on cold days 45 degrees.























Kale, radish and cabbages sprouting

































Kale and chard will go in ground when I have time. Whats going on in the green house March 1st.

Spring is here in Beaverton. My trees are starting to bloom and the winter sowed seed is coming up. I moved the table to garden for potting up. I added charcoal, and worm castings to the mix this time and hoping for good results.

My friends came helped to start veggies for the Gleaner Gardens and other gardens. We had a great lunch of chicken soup made with kale and spinach from the garden, salad with home grown sprouts, home made pickles of carrot, beet and ginger, meat balls (ground beef, onion, cilantro) in a mushroom sauce with bay, rosemary and sage and brown rice.

It was a lovely day with great company. The sun cooperated and we have lots of starts. Next I have to move my shelves to my new green house.

Seed saving the lazy way

This is how I do germination checks on top of my water heater. Like one time I had very dark tomato seed for a black tomato seed and germination was 100% so I planted em.

This is how I save tomato and melon seed. When I see a nice specimen of tomato and I save the seed in these bags honestly until I feel like it sometime it could be a few days, or a month or so. I write the name on the bag with permanent marker.

After 3 days you the film will easily rinse off. The its best to rinse seed earlier than later, the older the bag the stinkier it gets. I let my seeds dry in here with the plastic bag underneath so I know what variety of seed it is. Then I put it in a little plastic seed pouch, tea bag envelope, or an oragami seed envie.

This is how I organize my seed. I just keep em in the same family so I can find em when I need them.

This is my seedling set up. I still have this set up and one in the garage.

This was last year my overwintering peppers and eggplants.

While some worked out, I ended up sacrificing many babies to all kinds of weird little pests. Looking at the internet they looked like aphids, manure flies, and little little fly mosquitoes though they weren't mosquitoes. Some also got fried due to lights and being right under the heating vent.

My learning experience from last year was overwintered plants must have their own room to separate the pests from the baby plants.

In 2010 I covered the heat vent to keep the room cooler and bring the seedlings outside more often. Now that I have a green house they will go there earlier.

winter sowing

Winter sowing is easy for cool crops.

Togo plastics with covers make great little green houses and the seedlings come up on their own when nature says to.

Poke holes at the top and bottom for air circulation. I planted these in December and they came up at different times so it was nice planting them. Costco chicken boxes are my favorite. I use duct tape under so I can read what is in there.

I was sucessful with cabbage, kale, swiss chard, artichokes, lettuce, broccoli, kholrabi, brussells and the like. Great and green because it reuses

togo boxes and the seedlings do not require electric lights.